Conscious Collection and Sustainable Fashion

A couple weeks ago I woke up and got a steak, egg and cheese bagel sandwich from my favorite cafe. As I was on the phone with my guy we got into a little debate because he wanted to let me know how that steak was bad for me and that cow was probably tortured. How the cheese taken from a dairy cow, was probably from one who is being milked to death, and how the chicken who laid the egg for my sandwich is probably living in an overpopulated coop with a disease.....or something like that. Needless to say, I wasn't having it that morning. That sandwich was too delicious for me to care. BUT since I love this man a lot I figured I'd give his point of view a shot after he asked me to watch Earthlings, a documentary that not only covers the animals in the food industry, but also the ones in the fashion industry. Well, let's just say this.....by the end of that documentary I was not only tempted to become vegetarian, but I was also ready to throw away all my leather pieces....well, the 2 that I own somehow.

I don't want to be that woman who wears a leather jacket, as cute as it may be, if a cow had to die in brutal conditions just to make it. I have never and will never wear fur. I don't wear pieces with real feathers. I want to know about what I'm wearing and if any of it was made by harming animals in any way (so I can get rid of it immediately), so I've been doing my research and one store has definitely captured my full and undivided attention....H&M.

I kept seeing their Conscious Collection pieces. I had no idea what the Conscious Collection was but if it had its own separate tag, it had to differ from the rest of the store somehow right? So I dug a little deeper and was so ridiculously surprised at what I found out! And I couldn't be more thrilled, given my new knowledge and pledge to never wear animal products ever again.

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H&M's Conscious Collection is their way of starting to change the way people see fashion. By providing gorgeous wardrobe pieces to the every day woman, at affordable prices with conscious choices from fabric to maintenance.

When it comes to the materials, H&M is part of the Fur Free Alliance which banned the use of real fur products, and any cosmetics that have to be tested on animals. Their strict guidelines cover any animal product from leather and wool to down and feathers. They will not accept down plucked from live birds. They will not use genuine fur, and wool must come from farms that don't practice mulesing, a practice which is very painful for the sheep. They won't even accept leather from cows from India, since the transport conditions are so poor.

H&M has gotten pretty much all the bases covered with their Consious Collection pieces and they are just getting started, to read all about every detail please follow this link. For today though, I wanted to showcase two of the pieces from their newest line so that you all can see just how far sustainable fashion can go. You may have just read all this and painted a picture of a burlap sack thinking "How can so many rules and regulations still produce cute clothing?" Well I'm here to show you....it can. I picked up this gorgeous orange dress, and a zebra print tunic. I'll leave you with just that, ladies.....and let these gorgeous, affordable clothes speak for themselves.

"At H&M, we have set ourselves the challenge of ultimately making
fashion sustainable and sustainability fashionable. We want to help
people express their personality and feel proud of what they wear. I’m
very excited to see the progress we’ve made so far and how this will
help us to make you an even better offer – and create a more sustainable
fashion future"